All the salacious headlines are (mostly) true — as of today, you can’t unlock a carrier-subsidized smartphone on your own before the contract associated with it runs out without technically running afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Granted, I’d wager that the number of people who faithfully stick to their multi-year wireless contracts far exceeds the number of people who would unlock their phones and bail, but this is still a damned lousy turn of events for all you proponents of phone freedom out there (myself included).

But how did this actually happen? To more clearly understand the change that went into effect today, we have to flash back to the heady days of 2010.

Mathematics gets down to work in these talks, breathing life and logic into everyday problems. Prepare for math puzzlers both solved and unsolvable, and even some still waiting for solutions.

Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs
When Ron Eglash first saw an aerial photo of an African village, he couldn’t rest until he knew — were the fractals in the layout of the village a coincidence, or were the forces of mathematics and culture colliding in unexpected ways? Here, he tells of his travels around the continent in search of an answer.

How big is infinity?
There are more whole numbers than there are even numbers … right? Actually, there aren’t. This TED-Ed talk makes it crystal clear why not, in a lesson on the infinite infinities and math’s unanswerable questions.

3D systems has filed a lawsuit against both Formlabs and Kickstarter for patent infringement. Formlabs is the manufacturer of a low-cost 3D printer called the Form 1. Thanks to the stereolithography printing technique, the Form 1 can achieve professional grade 3D printing in a small hobbyist printer. It quickly became a Kickstarter success. Yet, in 1997 3D Systems patented stereolithography applications and now wants reparation from Formlabs, and Kickstarter who promoted the printer.

The Kickstarter fundraising campaign topped $1.4 million in pre-orders in just under a week, making it one of the notable successes of the platform. Formlabs ultimately raised $2,945,885. Kickstarter is financially involved as it takes a 5 percent cut on each campaign, according to the BBC.

Instead of using traditional melting techniques, Formlabs has opted for the “gold standard” in 3D printing — stereolithography, a high-precision positioning system designed to solidify plastics. It allows you…

LG, the South Korean electronics manufacturer, has introduced its first Smart Thinq connected appliance last week in its home country with a refrigerator that knows what’s inside it. The appliance can even communicate with your phone. According to an LG spokesman, a similar connected fridge will launch in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of this year or in the first quarter of next. Your kitchen is about to get a similar level of connectivity as your living room.

The Smart Thinq refrigerator got a lot of press last year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as smart appliances were all the rage. At the time the press was excited by the Android-based(s goog) OS that enabled the fridge to communicate with your smartphone and share information like the contents of the fridge. The idea was that when someone got home from the grocery store they could choose…

Microsoft (s MSFT) has unveiled details of an experimental small data center that it’s building next to a waste water treatment plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The tiny data center will be powered by a fuel cell that uses biogas from the water facility, and Microsoft will use the test project to learn how it can scale clean power resources for its other large data centers, and also to figure out how to enable its data centers to become less reliant on the power grid.

In an interview last week, Microsoft’s Senior Research Project Manager, Sean James, described the new “Data Plant” project as “a symbiotic relationship between a water plant and data center.” Microsoft says the Data Plant is “the first zero carbon data center,” and is the first data center to use biogas directly for a fuel cell to power a data center.

Apple’s Mac partner Intel is having trouble getting its chips into the booming tablet and smartphone space. That has lead to flat earnings and trouble for the once-dominant chipmaker. Today, Intel announced that CEO Paul Otellini would be replaced in May.

Otellini is also on Google’s Board of Directors and is pictured above in three of his Apple Keynote event cameos. Release follows: